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Targeting an Specific Country Audience - Domain Q

I know this might entail a novice SEO question, but i am having some doubts. Hope you can give your opinions. Its kind of technical question regarding domain and country targeting.

I have a Steel Construction company targeting only the audience of the particular country. Last year, i bought the targeted domains for my brand (company name), as in domain.country specific TLD,

Should i use these domains, redirect them, or something? Would that help?. I currently use domain.com, but i am constantly being beaten down by websites with domain specific with overly thin content, no PA or DA, and 0 links to their site.

Should i use my country specific domains, would that make a difference? Note: I also run some marketing campaigns for charitable foundation i started, and i used country specific domain and server, and with little effort i ranked top 3 in most of the desired terms.

6 Responses

If you have access to a country-specific TLD (ie .com.au for Australia or .co.uk for the UK) and you are trying to target that country's audience then absolutely, you should be using a country-specific TLD. Google already automatically geotargets these for you and yes, you get a clear algorithmic ranking boost for using them over something more "generic" that you physically geotarget yourself within Google Webmaster Tools.

For example, if I'm attempting to target Google Canada (Google.ca) and I want to provide the best algorithmic ranking potential for my site right out-of-the-gate (based solely on a domain level), I'm going to choose a .ca domain over a .com domain every time. All you have to do is browse the country specific indexes yourself to see this in action. As you correctly pointed out, even a low-authority country specific TLD routinely trounces stronger generic sites or subdomains that have been individually geotargeted. And yes, as you stated, coupling a country-specific TLD with in-country hosting is just a smart practice since it reinforces a clear geotargeted preference. The more signals the better in that regard.

Bottom line: if you have access to both the country-specific and general TLDs, allows go country-specific. It's the recommended best practice.

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